osama and the interwebs

Well, I'm not going to blog about Osama/Usama Bin Laden being dead. Not directly, anyway. Evidently, everybody has strong and different opinions about it, and I don't care for arguing, unless I am very, very likely to win. Then, okay.

But what was fascinating to me last night as the events unfolded was the internetty aspect of it. (I'm a writer, I write.) I mean, here I am, cheerily surfing the web and watching Netflix or something, and all of the sudden Twitter just explodes with rumors, and I'm all like, "No way!" because this has been a long time coming.

So the MOG and I, being techno-geeks as well as game-day politics fans, tuned into various internet media streams to hear the President speak. It took him about 90 minutes to walk down the red hallway, so we used that time for speculation and the occasional Osama joke. It didn't take long to see that our social networks were strongly divided.

And that is what was super interesting. News was breaking here and there, and so we were all processing the same information through our various screens and then broadcasting our thoughts on the internet, and then maybe debating.

By the time it got to the actual news, you know, with the Prez, it had already sunk in and he didn't really tell us anything new.

It was so reminiscent of 9/11, and so vastly different. That day, we were at the mercy of the major TV networks. We watched and we waited, a whole country holding its breath. Last night, we had the world news at our fingertips, coming from prophets and atheists, anarchists and world leaders, civilians on the ground unknowingly live-blogging, and us, putting the pieces together and deciding what to believe.

I have political opinions, but opinions are never in short supply and I don't really care to convince you, you have my permission to feel however you feel. And tweet about it, so I can roll my eyes at you.